by Jim Brown
A fainting goat.
He looked in the mirror and smiled at his still-youthful face.
Almost time, almost time. He began to giggle, then was gone.
“We found Mason’s body,” Jerry said as Dean and Nathan frantically loaded the last of their supplies into the back of the sheriff’s Jeep Cherokee. Dean heard him, the words cutting deeply into his heart, but there was no time for emotion. He continued to work.
“What’s all this equipment for? Lights, generators, and what’s that suitcase- looking thing?”
“Don’t touch that,” Nathan said.
Jerry grabbed Dean by the arm. “You don’t think you’re going to face that son of a bitch without me, do you?”
Dean stopped, starred at the man as if seeing him for the first time. He wipe his face with his hand. One hour and twenty-one minutes, his mind whispered. “Someone has to be here in case we fail.”
“Then let Nathan stay.”
“I need Nathan. He’s had some medical training. Besides, Dobbs will tolerate him being there, but not you.”
“To hell with him. Like it or not, I’m in this up to my ass. I owe it the town, to the sheriff, to see it through.”
Dean and Nathan exchanged a look. They had expected this.
“Fine, but you’ll have to be prepped against radiation poisoning.” Nathan opened up a medical back and removed a vial an syringe. “Step inside, we don’t have long.”
The pair disappeared. Dean continued to load the Jeep. Three minutes later Nathan returned. “I gave him an anesthetic. He’ll be out for at least an hour. Damn, I hated doing that.”
“It’s for his own good,” Dean said. “You probably just saved his life. Speaking of which, you’re not going.”
“I have to. You can’t do this alone.”
“Yes, I can,” Dean said with cold determination.
“Damn it, Dean. This isn’t just about you.”
“You’re right. It’s about Piper, too. I need you to stay here and take care of her.”
“I can take care of myself.” Piper stepped out of the building. She had changed into borrowed clothes and was wearing the smallest sheriff’s department coat available. It was still too big. She charged, arms swinging, hands lost in the coat. “Besides, I’m going with you.”
“What? Like hell you are.”
“You going to give me a shot, too? Knock me out?”
“I want you to stay for me. I’m being selfish. I’ve lost too much already. I couldn’t bear to lose you. Not now. Not after all of this.”
She had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him.
“I have to go, Dean. You need me.”
“I can – ”
“No. You can’t. I’m your wild card. I can sense things. Whatever he’s got prepared, odds are he didn’t figure me into the equation. You need me. And besides, if Dobbs isn’t stopped, it doesn’t matter whether we go or not, he’ll kill us both -- eventually.”
Dean was quiet. Snow fell in silent feathers.
“She’s right, Dean,” Nathan said. “He’ll kill us. Just like he did the others.”
Dean inhaled slowly. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t think he could do this.
“How can I help?” she asked Nathan, ignoring Dean.
The mayor hazarded a short look at Dean before replying. “I need another gel pack just to be safe. Tell Nurse Atchins it’s for me.”
She nodded. Dark hair bounced in her eyes. She brushed it back, then saluted. Her fingers just protruded from the oversize coat, making her look like a little girl playing dress-up. But this was no little girl, Dean reminded himself. She had shown more grace under fire than any of them. In many ways, with John and Mason gone, she was the toughest member of their group.
“I’m on it. Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Dean removed a small black box from the police cruiser. “Take this. It’s a stun gun – police issue, five hundred thousand volts. Press the prongs against the target and pull the trigger.”
“Got it,” she said, reaching under her coat and clipping the device to her waistband.
“Piper,” Dean sighed. “And be careful.”
It’s sweet, actually – but also infuriating, Piper thought as she hurried to the hospital. She had been taking care of herself since she was a child – certainly since the night her mother died, the night Whitey Dobbs was buried alive yet lived to tell about it, lived to kill about it. But it was . . .well, kind of nice.
The Black Valley Hospital was busy, too busy. Patients’ cries merged with bleating machinery and urgent talk to create a horrible cacophony.
Somewhere, Piper knew, Whitey Dobbs was watching and laughing.
She didn’t find Nurse Atchins, but she did find the gel packs. She took two, a backup for the backup, and left the hospital quickly, anxious to be away from the pain and suffering, impatient to get on with it, to take down the monster responsible for all this.
Piper turned the corner and headed for the rear parking lot. She could see the Jeep Cherokee in the shine of the streetlight when something grabbed her from behind. A hand holding a cloth with a medicinal smell closed over her mouth, squelching her scream. She could feel hot breath on her neck as lips brushed her ear and a voice murmured, “Playtime.”
38
“How long?” Nathan asked.
“We’ve got one hour and thirteen minutes,” Dean answered without pause. “Before Whitey Dobbs appears on Hawkins Hill.”
“And you think this will work?” Nathan asked.
“It’ll work. It has to work.”
Nathan took a slow, deep breath. “A bullet would work better.”
“No, it wouldn’t. I’ll explain later.” They labored for several minutes in silence as Nathan backed up the Jeep Cherokee and Dean attached the horse trailer. “What about the calf?”
“Old man Peterson’s got a sick one that’s not going to make it. It’s on the way.”
Dean nodded. Despite what he had said, he was not at all confident. Too many unknowable factors remained. Whitey Dobbs would appear at precisely midnight – somewhere on the crest of Hawkins Hill, but the exact location was unclear. This meant Dobbs could just as easily appear behind them as in front of them. Using equipment pilfered from the College, Dean planned to set off a series of early detection devices that might alert them mere seconds before Dobbs fully materialized. There were twelve units in all, and each would have to be calibrated on the scene. A task that would take a minimum of twenty-one minutes.
The early warning was crucial. There was only one tranquilizer dart – one chance to take Whitey Dobbs down.
Then . . .
In the mill Dobbs had bragged to Piper that he was going to have someone take his place in the time stream. That meant he had to have some way, some device, to transfer the neorads to another living creature, obviously one of them. But if they could knock Dobbs out first, then Dean should be able to transfer the radiation to the sick calf, leaving Whitey Dobbs as normal as the next guy.
In theory.
“Piper’s been gone a long time,” Dean said, locking the trailer hitch in place.
Nathan pursed his lips. “She may be having trouble finding the gel pack.”
Dean frowned. “Do we really need that?”
“I hope to God not, but I’ll feel better if we have it. I want to take as much first-aid equipment as we can and pray we don’t need it.”
“We could leave without her,” Dean suggested.
Nathan laughed, a strained, fragile sound. “She would just come on her own. I’ll go find her.”
“Hurry,” Dean urged.
One hour and ten minutes.
Piper woke in the dark, stirred by the sound of a baby crying. Her head seemed to swell and shrink with each beat of her heart, and there was funny taste in he
r mouth. She tried to move. Her left hand struck wood, her right hit something cold and metallic.
The baby cried.
No, not a baby – a phone.
She found it lying next to her head. She pressed a button and the phone lit up. The green display was uncommonly bright in the thick darkness, revealing . . .
Her breath caught in her chest.
“Hello? Hellooo . . .” a voice sang from the phone.
Her eyes rolled wild with terror.
“You awake?” the voice asked.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Couldn’t believe.
“How you doing down there?”
Piper put the phone to her ear, dousing the green light and blinding her to the horror.
“W– where . . . where . . .”
Laughter bled from the phone, merging with the oppressive darkness.
“Where are you?” Whitey Dobbs said, finishing her question. “In the ground, on the hill. Dead and buried. Well, except for the dead part. All in good time.”
Buried? Piper couldn’t think.
“How do you like the accommodations? Built it myself, you know. Oh sure, it’s not fancy like those funeral home coffins, just wood and nails. But it gets the job done.
Piper couldn’t speak.
“Built it and dug the grave over a ten-year period – your time. For me it’s been about three weeks.”
Already the air was beginning to taste stale and heavy with carbon dioxide.
“There’s an air tank next to you. I recommend putting on the face mask. But breathe lightly. You’ve only got about an hour. Oh, and only a few minutes left on that phone. I recommend you call that boyfriend of yours right away. If you can get through.”
“Let me out of here, you bastard, let me out!” Piper screamed into the phone. She was answered with a dial tone.
Whitey Dobbs laughed. His voice echoed across the top of Hawkins Hill.
The grave was an inspired idea. If Dean had the paper describing where and when Dobbs would materialize next, then he knew he had at least an hour to prepare all sorts of nasty surprises. But now . . .
Now Dean would have to spend that hour looking for Piper. Leaving him completely unprepared for Dobbs’s arrival.
Originally it was Nathan Perkins who was going to occupy the grave. But that all changed when he met Piper and when he saw the look of affection between her and Dean. No, this was better, much better.
Dean knew there was a problem the moment he saw Nathan. The fear shining in his eyes was magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses. He was trotting and carrying two gel packs.
“Where is she?” Dean screamed before Nathan reached him. “Where?”
Nathan shook his head. “I don’t know. No one saw her at the hospital. But it’s pretty hectic. They could have missed her.”
“The packs?” Dean asked.
“I found these lying over by the alley.”
The spark of fear that had been burning in the back of his mind flared into a roaring blaze.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Nathan offered.
His voice seemed muffled and far away, muted by the roar of the increasing mental fire.
“Maybe she just got lost?” Nathan offered.
“In Black Valley?”
Nathan shook his head. Obviously he, too, suspected the worst. “We’ve got to go on. We have to stop Dobbs.”
Dean’s cell phone rang – “Fur Elise.” The sound seemed woefully out of place with the severity of their situation. For a moment he was unsure of what to do. The phones had been hit-or-miss for days. That his was now working seemed somehow suspect and ominous.
It continued to ring. Nathan met his eyes. “Answer it. It may be Piper.”
Piper. That snapped Dean out of his paralysis. He hit the answer button and put the phone to his ear. He could hear crying from the other end of the line. “Piper? Is that you? Piper? Where are you?”
“Dean.” Her voice was raspy and strained.
“Piper, where are you?”
“Hawkins Hill. It’s Dobbs. I’ve been buried alive.”
The fear that had been burning in his mind now rushed to his heart.
“I don’t have long. The batteries are almost gone.”
The stress in her voice acted as a calming influence on Dean. He had to gain control, had to clear his head. It was Piper’s only chance.
Click. The sound was faint, innocuous, most likely just static on the line. But when Piper spoke again the volume was lower.
“He knocked me out. I – I think it was chloroform. I woke up in this wooden coffin.”
Wooden?
“Describe it to me.”
“It’s just . . . wood. He said he made it himself. Bastard seemed proud of it. I can’t see much. Just from the glow of the phone. Hold on.”
The snow was falling again. Flakes as large as a half-dollars fluttered and danced in the shifting night air. A cry of pain from the phone.
“Piper!”
“I’m all right. Just cut my arm on a nail. He sucks as a carpenter. It’s a wooden coffin. I don’t see any latches. The lid must have been . . . have been . . .” She choked back a sob. “It’s nailed shut.”
Nailed.
“Dean, I’ve got an air tank.”
Thank God, Dean thought, sagging with relief.
“Dobbs said there’s only about an hour’s worth of air. You’ve got to hurry.”
An hour. “Piper, listen carefully. First of all, I think Dobbs may be listening.”
“Very good,” said a new voice, a male voice. “How’s it hanging, Jimmy Dean?”
Dobbs.
“Let me out of here, you bastard,” Piper screamed.
Whitey Dobbs laughed, the sound more obscene than any swear word Dean had ever heard.
“Ignore him, Piper. Try to stay calm. I don’t want you to go into shock. Understand? I think he’s fishing for some kind of reaction here. He wants us to squirm. I’m going to get you out of there. I promise.”
Again Dobbs laughed. The phone began to beep. The battery was going.
“Science, Piper, science. Do you understand?” Dean repeated louder this time.
The line hissed, then Piper’s voice, weaker now, “I – I think so. Dean, I just want you to know –
The phone went dead. Dean stood there for a moment, the silent machine still pressed to his ear as if it, like a person, could catch a second wind.
“Dean, what are we going to do?” Nathan asked. He had heard only half the conversation but enough to know what was happening.
“Change of plans. Come on. We’ve got to hurry.”
39
Fifty-one minutes.
Forks of lightning jabbed the sky as the Jeep Cherokee climbed the washed-out dirt road that crawled along and up the side of Hawkins Hill. The moon was up and, finding a hole in the dome of gray clouds, doused the landscape in yellow, secondary light.
The town lay to their left, an assortment of shapes and shadows sprinkled with pin points of light, growing smaller as they climbed. The dirt-etched trail was pocked with gullies. It stopped ten feet shy of the circle of snowless, burned earth that marked the crown of Hawkins Hill.
It’s almost as if even the road is afraid to venture farther, Dean thought.
The parallel beams of the truck sprayed new light into the dead area. They stopped and shut off the engine but left the lights on. Nathan worked quickly, taking out a large black case and a medical bag, and placing them on the ground beside the Jeep. He opened the bag and carefully began filling the tranquilizer dart.
“You sure about this?” he asked.
Dean stood gravestone still, though something moved behind his eyes. Nathan wasn’t sure if it was fear or hatred or something much, much worse.
>
“I’m sure.”
Nathan looked around the crest of Hawkins Hill. It was rife with chronol disruptions. Just beyond the apron of light, things seemed to move in the shadows.
The air began to whistle. “They’re all over the place. Time holes.” Something moaned in the darkness, as if the very night were in agony.
“Let’s get these lights up,” Dean said.
Nathan and Dean worked quickly, setting up two powerful battery-operated klieg lights. Bright white waves shoved back the shadows, revealing the crown in sharper detail. The ground was soggy but snow free. Something had recently burned a circle about sixty feet in circumference. At the edges snow was piled more than a foot and a half high, giving the impression of an ivory-walled arena.
And somewhere out there, under there, is Piper.
The sky cracked with thunder. Lightning flared, revealing a writhing boil of black-purple clouds. The moon was gone. The ground trembled.
“Jesus, she could be anywhere,” Nathan moaned.
“No. Dobbs told her she was on Hawkins Hill.”
“And you believe him?”
“On this I do. It’s just the sort of thing he would like. Brings it all full circle.”
Dean scanned the landscape. “And the fact that the cell phone worked underground means . . .”
“ . . . She’s not buried deep,” Nathan finished. “Still, that’s a lot off ground to cover in just – what?”
“Thirty-six minutes and twenty-two seconds.”
Piper had no conception of time. She felt as if she had been underground somewhere between ten seconds and ten years. How can things be happening fast and slow at the same time?
But she knew this was no temporal fluke, rather a matter of perception.
She could feel panic waiting at the periphery of her emotions, but she fought to keep it at bay. Dean would find her. She knew he would.
Yeah, but will I still be alive when he does?
Suck air.
The medicinal taste left by what she assumed was chloroform was not helped by the stagnant slightly metallic taste of the bottled air. She tried to breathe shallowly, sparingly, conserving oxygen.